That morning I awoke at seven, expecting to feel nervous or at least groggy. I’d been up all night deliberating over what to pack: black puffer jacket, or my leather boots? In the end, I’d gone with the boots, perfectly worn and moulded to my feet. Black puffer jackets probably grew on trees in Melbourne, anyway.
My parents had both left for work, bickering as usual as they left the house, not knowing I had handed in my notice for my shitty job a week earlier. I had spent the time they assumed I was in the office at the library instead—admiring my university acceptance letter and looking at apartments and part-time jobs. I had hated working at a call centre; that depressing little cubicle, the impersonal rudeness of each new caller, the brutality of an eight-hour workday without a lick of sunlight or a drop of human compassion. This wasn’t what I was destined to do. No, I was getting out.
I was going to be an artist.
Underneath my clothes and books and stuff was my golden ticket: my accepted portfolio. It was a modest but promising collection of works from the last year, done in professional grade watercolours and oil pastels and graphite, secured with sealant. It was only too perfect that my own creativity and hard work, the result of many hours spent toiling at my desk, was my ticket out of this life that didn’t feel like mine.
I took stock of my plundered bedroom, with its scraps of sailboat wallpaper (remnants from when I’d tried to remove it in my teens) and the glum school photo of my seven-year-old self trapped in a gaudy rainbow frame, which I couldn’t bring myself to take down. Under it, a folded stack of laundry sat on my king single bed. What a sad little room—perfect for the sad little man I was leaving behind. I set my suitcase on the ground and dragged it behind me, even down the stairs, allowing it to slam down on each step and make a terrible racket. I was in no hurry—I had planned everything out so that I’d be at the airport with time to spare. Anyway, there was something deeply satisfying about making loud noises with abandon, I reflected, as I brought out last night's dinner of chicken wings and garlic rice. Maybe once I got to Melbourne, I’d take drum lessons. Join a band, even. I could write songs about leaving the past behind, getting out. Bleach my hair. Or maybe—
I stopped myself. A familiar sound, like someone biting down on a spoonful of crunchy cereal. A car was driving up the gravel driveway. I had always liked that sound, but it sounded like the breaking of so many bones to me now.
With one last, longing look at the front door, I picked up my suitcase by the handle and ran back upstairs to my room. I had been so close, so close. Out of the corner of my bedroom window, I watched as my mother climbed out of her blue hatchback. What was she doing home so soon? And how could I explain the state of my room, half packed and otherwise in a state of disarray? I heard the front door creak open and hid in my built-in wardrobe.
Downstairs, the dull thwack of the fridge being idly opened and closed, again and again. Clearly, my mother was helping herself to the contents of the refrigerator. For fourteen minutes, according to the timer on my phone, which I silenced in case of any notifications (to my new University of Melbourne email, perhaps, or a message from the UniMelb Discord server I had just joined). I also had my e-ticket open—it was soothing, looking at the barcode lines that would release me from this prison.
I needed soothing, too. As my mother lounged about in the kitchen, time was running out for me. I had to leave home soon and would probably have to book a taxi. But how could I book a car when I had no idea when my mother would finally leave? I was in the process of trying to find another way out of the house (there was a dense Banksia bush under my window—perhaps if I put on my puffer jacket and bike helmet, then jumped out the window? Could I manage the ten-odd metre fall?), when I heard a second car pull up.
That had to be my father.
What was going on?
Cautiously, I crept out of my wardrobe and made my way to my door, left ajar from my hurry earlier. I heard their voices carry up the stairs, as they had been doing my whole life.
I heard a sigh. “This can’t keep happening, Gemma. We can’t keep missing work like this; it’s just not on.”
“Mark—go get her a chocolate yoghurt or something. Please?”
Stomping footsteps toward the kitchen.
Muttering: “Chocolate yoghurt as a reward for wetting your pants five times in one month. It’s no wonder…”
I remember those yoghurts tasting better when I was little—more like chocolate, a little smoother, silkier. If I’d have just grabbed one of those little tubs and had breakfast in the taxi, I would have been at the airport by now and not still stuck here with them.
Another sigh. Mum must have been trying to set a new record. “Gemma, sweetie, is there something that happened at school that you want to tell us? Is someone bullying you at recess, or … or do you need more help with your schoolwork?”
Silence.
“If it’s not that, then—are you worried about going to the toilet?”
I looked at the time. I was definitely going to need a taxi now, someone who could speed a little, break a few rules. But all hope was not yet lost. Maybe if I could just ease my way out of the house, and if everyone stayed absorbed in what they were doing…
I crawled out of my room on all fours, then turned around and dragged my bag out behind me. I could only see the front door and a bit of the living room from where I was on the carpet, but through a gaudy mirror my mother had gotten off Gumtree and put above our shoe cabinet, I saw all three of them sitting on the couch. Three frowning faces. There was no way I could leave without being seen. In fact, it was a miracle they didn’t see me glaring in the mirror.
“Aren’t you hungry, darl? Would you like something else?”
“Look, we just need to have a stop to the pant wetting, alright? I’m sure it’s caused you a fair bit of strife with your teachers, and with all your friends, and…we’d be happy to help if we just knew what was bothering you. Is that—can you do that?”
Silence. My new silk crepe de chine shirt had ridden up, and the scratchy carpet was making my skin itch like crazy.
A third sigh, forceful. Disappointed. I spotted a little pink bead in the shape of a heart embedded in the carpet. It was as though nobody cleaned.
“Maybe it’s time to try that psychologist again, Mark, just to see—”
“To see what? How empty our accounts can get? How much one quack with a degree can bleed two people dry because their son is too lazy and self-absorbed to—”
“Mark!”
“Six years of free childcare when we should have been bloody retired. I don’t see why Tony isn’t here right now. This is his problem.”
“Look, he’s been having a hard enough time at work as it is. Can’t we just wait ‘til the afternoon?”
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, telling me my check-in window would close in ten minutes. But their argument didn’t end; on and on they went about things that had already been discussed to death, the same script over and over again as I waited upstairs, stuck as always.
I looked up at the mirror and saw Gemma looking back at me from her place on the couch, dressed in her uniform but in an odd pair of school pants, too big for her and the wrong colour. Her Bluey backpack and home reader bag sat next to her. As her eyes met mine, she sat up a little, her cloudy expression evaporating as she stretched out her arms towards something in my direction, though I couldn’t imagine what. Luckily my parents were too busy hollering at each other to notice where she was looking.
And before they could, I went back to my room to test my luck with the Banksia bush.
